No Title because Words Cannot Describe This Well – Ohio Crimes of Police Failures, Political Incompetence and Ariel Castro type abusive men

The worst of this case is what it says about America – what is most likely ahead for almost every one of our girls, women and daughters – that they will be raped and abused, police won’t protect them in the first place nor believe them in the second place, that they are most likely to have war zones that assault or murder them that occur in their own living rooms, bedrooms, hallways, bathrooms and kitchens – and that any crime in America against a woman is not considered crime at all. When a man assaults another man (or even a dog), he is charged with that assault. If he assaults a woman, beats her nearly to death, causes permanent horrific injury to her – it is not called assault – it is considered a matter of opinion by police or something she asked for or deserved. They are wrong.
– cricketdiane

Beyond that, our weak, lost young and middle aged men will continue to be abusive to women throughout the rest of our lifetimes in America because nothing is changing in their estimation of what it means to hit a woman, to rape, to imprison, to denigrate or to treat her in any shitty way they see fit. Their fellow men agree with it, their political decision-makers support their rights to do it and at the same time, those same authorities and decision-makers refuse to consider the rights of women to live free of this abuse as anything other than contemptible and a joke.

It is a shame that it is still this way but more shameful still, that in every state across the country – the numbers have indicated a far worse situation rather than a safer one that is getting any better – and that despite the fact that most of these assaults fail to be reported at all. But even when they are – the common response from the community, from leaders, from police and other authorities, from politicians and other men is that women are a bunch screaming about something without reason, needlessly and without cause. There is no value given to what women are saying about any of it – so it will continue to be this way. All our daughters will likely be raped. Many of them will be subjected to horrific domestic violence, abuse at the hand of male friends and far too likely, even murdered by those same men they should have been able to trust not to hurt them. It is obscene that men in our communities treat women’s experiences when victimized at the hands of another as if that is some fault of the one victimized. They wouldn’t look at it that way if it had happened to them.

People are already demanding to know why the three women kidnapped and abused by Castro didn’t just leave. Well, maybe the person saying that should try being hung from the ceiling by a chain while being beat with whatever is handy and then see if they can free themselves from those chains and head out the door with the five locks on it and the perpetrator ever standing just outside.

And, politicians including Speaker Boehner and his Republican cronies responsible to the people of Ohio – show by their actions that “so what if 83,000 women have been raped or sexually assaulted in America today and 2,000 children have gone missing today across America – that isn’t a real problem. The real problem is what somebody said or didn’t say about Benghazi despite the fact that we didn’t budget anything for its security.” That’s probably the only thing that the men who vote for them and pay donations to them care about – not this other stuff anyway.

Obviously neither local politicians, state politicians nor national politicians need women, girls, children, elderly, disabled or poor people voting for them regardless. And also obviously, police in our communities don’t care about the needs of those populations either unless they can use them to make some money off of – which is why any woman, disabled person, girl or elderly person is more likely to get arrested for a misdemeanor (like, because their married name doesn’t match their maiden name on their drivers’ license, for instance) than for any felony rapist or murderer of women to go to jail. And since Republicans have made our cities, towns, counties, boroughs, provinces and states into money making prison and jail systems – it will continue to be more likely to spend jail time for parking tickets, misdemeanors before they are even proven, stupid inane stuff and for being homeless or handicapped or disabled or for being a victim of domestic violence – rather than anything else. We ought to just take all our daughters somewhere else – maybe Australia, or Canada, or Greenland, or Iceland – or many other nations that aren’t like this one, excluding the thirty that are worse.

In this photo, because news reporters believe that his head bowed means “remorse” – failed to notice his left hand clutched so tightly in a fist and tightly gripped by his outside hand that the veins are poking out on both – he is obviously furious – angry at those girls in all likelihood for getting him in all this trouble – he’s probably saying, “those goddamned bitches” under his breath over and over and over –

Many of the photos actually have that clenched fist as he is shown in the court proceedings. He has no remorse –

**

Of the Cleveland, Ohio Police –

So far, in a series of public meetings, activists, victims and their families have echoed the complaints of generations past that the city, and specifically the police, embrace a culture that discourages reporting the missing and dismisses too many who say they have been attacked.

“The Police Department is full of excuses and has been for years,” said Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Timothy McGinty, an outspoken critic of many department policies. “They have excuses for everything. Enough with the circular firing squad, the smoke and mirrors . . . something has to be done to restore public confidence in the system.”

This time, the call for change is more urgent than ever:the bodies of 11 women undetected by policewhile they stacked up at the home of sex offender andserial killing suspect, Anthony Sowell.

Six of them went missing after police and city prosecutors discounted the 2008 report of a woman who said she had survived Sowell’s attack. Authorities believed Sowell’s version of events, overlooking his sex offender designation. And the victim’s story was labeled “not credible.”

When today or yesterday, the Cleveland Police said the DNA taken from Ariel Castro was being matched with their database – they neglected to mention that their rape evidence has not been being processed since 1993 and Cleveland’s has only been being processed at the rate of 25 per month for a short time to process any of it – They have no way to know if any of it matches sexual crimes that occurred in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 – etc. –

on February 17, 2013 at 6:00 AM, updated February 17, 2013 at 2:34 PM

Rape kits that have been in storage for years are being tested by a state crime lab, and may offer DNA evidence which could help solve hundreds of sexual assault cases. Lonnie Timmons III /The Plain Dealer

Police agencies across Ohio have sent more than 2,300 previously untested rape kits to a state crime lab — evidence which has the potential to help solve hundreds of sexual assault cases, some decades old.Nearly half of the kits have come from Cleveland police.

Statewide, when all currently submitted kits are tested, police departments could be faced with some 850 potential cases resulting from the DNA matches. Cleveland could have about 390, according to the analysis.

Some of the older cases could run up against a justice system time clock based on a 20-year statute of limitations for prosecuting rape cases.

The untested evidence was been on DeWine’s radar since at least 2003 when as a U.S. Senator he helped secure federal money to help departments catch up with testing the kits.

At that time he estimated there were 3,000 kits going back to 1993 to be tested.

“The longer this evidence sits around unanalyzed, the longer sex offenders remain free – and free to potentially harm more victims,” DeWine said at the time.

DeWine said that victims were enduring rapes and then intensive examinations to gather evidence — only to have it sit on shelves.

Since McGrath made the decision to test all kits, Cleveland has been consistently sending to the state lab sexual assault evidence in cases going back to 1993 in batches of 25.

McGrath said the state lab’s previous restrictions prevented some of the older kits from being sent unless the case was likely to be prosecuted.

As of Wednesday, the city had submitted 1,073 kits – nearly half of the 2,336 submitted by 54 agencies statewide. Cleveland is having current kits tested at the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s office.

McGinty and other members of the Crime Analysis Unit receive missing persons information from each Police District, and compile it by district, date missing, age, name, address, and case number.

Since the beginning of 2006, there are still 155 people from Cleveland whose whereabouts are still unaccounted for, out of a list of 11,436 originally reported missing.

Sgt. McGinty expects most of the 155 to be located.

“For the most part, it’s just temporary missing people leaving the house, they don’t want to come home at night,” he explained. “They’re rounded up later when the go to school, or come home, and we report them back off the missing list.”

The Crime Analysis Unit reports that far fewer than one percent of all persons reported missing in the City of Cleveland remain missing for more than a year.

Three people remain missing from 2006, along with four each from 2007 and 2008. There are still 48 people reported missing in 2009 who are still unaccounted for.

Of the 847 people reported missing in 2010, 96 remain unaccounted for. Most were recently added to the list.

Police hope that when the public looks at the list and recognizes a name, and realizes the person is no longer missing, that they will call Cleveland Police.

Cleveland Ohio Missing Persons List from Police Dept by District and Year – the three girls just found are not on it and the dates of missing only go through 2010 – are they clearing them off the list after a certain period of time or assumption that they are dead? or what?
Only goes from 01-01-2006 to 08-30-2010

Today on CNN the anchor mentioned that police estimate 2,000 children PER DAY go missing across the US. – 05-10-13 –

This is how police have been handling these situations in Ohio – when it is a crime against a woman rather than an assault on a dog, a man or against a car or garbage dumpster –

Sowell, 50, faces nearly 100 charges related to the murder, rape and assault of at least 15 women. He has pleaded not guilty.

One woman, who said Sowell assaulted her in 2008, was deemed not credible by city prosecutors.

The initial police report, made after the bleeding woman flagged down a patrol car is an unbiased account, with a thorough documentation of the woman’s account. But the detective’s follow-up report seems steeped in doubt and disbelief.

The city did not to prosecute that case. And in the year that followed, six of the women found in Sowell’s home disappeared.

One report states that, under the threat of a large silver revolver, a woman “engaged” in sex with her rapist and then was forced to “perform” oral sex.

When another woman told police she was raped in the parking lot of a beverage store, on the ground beside the attacker’s van, the responding officer noted that “unexplainably the couple ended up … in a lighted parking lot in plain view of the bp station.”

And the report concludes that due to increased break-ins in the area, extra zone cars were patrolling at the time in question and “observed no red van, rape, or the victim walking.”

In another case, an officer explained that a reported gang rape would be labeled “alleged” because the victim changed details of her story multiple times — a common symptom of disorientation after experiencing trauma, experts say.

“It was at this time after asking vict #1 for clarification she began to cry w/no tears,” the officer wrote. “Due to vict #1’s conflicting statements & several versions, report titled to read alleged.”

For example, officers in Cleveland often sanitize the description of sexual attacks.

In one case, the mentally-impaired victim told police that she tried to fight off an attacker, a friend’s boyfriend. She even sent a text message to another friend pleading for help. But the part of the report in which the officer describes the rape overlooks the element of force, stating only that the attacker “…began having intercourse.”

The day before yesterday during one of the reports on CNN or BBC America news during the press coverage of one kidnapped girls returning home for the first time in ten years, the reporter noted that the police in Cleveland just don’t get it as to why there is such interest in this case by press from around the world.

This man’s second cousin was married to the perpetrator at one time and he visited him each Christmas with his family as well – lives in West Palm Beach for the last 15 years –

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A West Palm Beach man says he was friends with Ariel Castro, the Ohio man now charged with keeping three women captive inside his run down home for a decade.

Richard said, “You put the puzzle together, and you see what actually created this monster.”Investigators say the women were apparently bound with ropes and chains, and that they were subjected to prolonged sexual and psychological abuse.Richard says his second cousin was married to Castro at one time.Richard says that relationship was abusive, but Richard still maintained a friendship with Castro.

Tito DeJesus (no relation to one of the women being held, who has the same surname) walked through that door. “He kept his musical instruments in the living room,” DeJesus said of the owner, Castro. “He was a bass player.”

As a fellow musician, DeJesus went inside the house three times to see Castro. He described a few simple pieces of furniture, a sofa and a chair or two. He notes that Castro kept his bass, amplifier and speaker out in the living room, where he could easily pick them up and play, and that that room led directly into the dining room, and from there, a closed door led to the kitchen in back. The house was reasonably tidy when DeJesus stopped by and “quiet … like it was empty.”

The alleged Cleveland kidnapper’s brothers are friendly drunks with no apparent jobs or girlfriends. They lived with their Jehovah’s Witness mom. And now they’re pariahs.

Four hours later, police charged Ariel Castro with kidnapping and rape in connection with the case, while Onil and Pedro were not charged. They would be held overnight on outstanding misdemeanor warrants—both for unrelated open container cases—and will likely go free after those issues are resolved.

According to a Los Angeles Times report, Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba described Ariel Castro as “the big bully…. This guy, he ran the show … He acted alone. These guys [the brothers] didn’t have anything to do with it. We had enough probable cause to bring them into custody. We found no facts to link them to the crime.

“There is nothing that leads us to believe they were involved or they had any knowledge of this, and that comes from statements of our victims, and their statements and their brother’s [Ariel’s] statements. Ariel kept everybody at a distance.”

City records show Pedro has had ten cases filed against him since 1994. Onil has had four. None were felonies.

One of Castro’s daughters has a sobering criminal record of her own: Emily Castro is serving 25 years in prison for attempting to murder her infant daughter.

Court records indicate Emily moved to Fort Wayne, Ind., with her boyfriend, Deangelo Gonzalez, where she had a baby girl.

Emily Castro suffered from manic depression diagnosed when she was 13, the court record says. On April 4, 2007, a day after her boyfriend moved out, Castro, then 19, allegedly slashed the 11-month-old’s throat four times, cut her own neck and wrists and then attempted to drown herself in a nearby creek.

Records show Ariel was arrested for domestic violence in 1993, but that a grand jury declined to indict him.

In 2005, a woman who had three children with Ariel Castro accused him of severely beating her and repeatedly threatening to kill her and her children, according to court records obtained by WKYC-TV.

Grimilda Figueroa, the mother of Castro’s children, alleged that he had broken her nose twice, broken her ribs, knocked out a tooth, caused a blood clot on her brain that caused an inoperable tumor, and dislocated her shoulder twice.

Castro also threatened to kill Figueroa and her two daughters, the file noted. The case was later dropped because Figueroa’s attorney did not appear for a hearing, records show.

The three women disappeared from the same Cleveland street — Lorain Avenue — and were held just three miles away.

Knight was the first reported missing, in August 2002. She was 21. A police report on her disappearance described her as having “mental abnormalities,” but her mother told “Today” that Knight only suffered from asthma.

Knight’s disappearance was followed by that of Berry, who was last seen at the end of her shift at a Burger King in April 2003. She was 16. DeJesus was reported missing a year later, in April 2004, at 14.

According to court documents, Ariel Castro’s former common-law wife accused him of repeatedly abusing her, including breaking her nose twice, breaking two ribs, dislocating her shoulder twice and knocking out a tooth.

Grimilda Figueroa, who died in 2012, also accused Castro of causing a blood clot on her brain, according to the 2005 documents. A judge granted a protection order, but lifted it three months later after repeated court delays and hearings Castro did not attend, according to the documents.

Figueroa’s father, Ishmael Figueroa, said Ariel Castro was abusive toward his late daughter. He said he and his wife once shared a house with Castro and Grimilda, and Castro would not let family members upstairs to the second floor where the couple lived. When they moved to the Seymour Avenue house, Castro would not let family members inside, Figueroa said.

But Maria Castro Montes, a cousin of the suspects, told CNN Wednesday if other family members had any inkling or suspicion of wrongdoing, they would have spoken up.

Ariel Castro, accused of kidnapping three Cleveland women, was a school bus driver with a long, long list of traffic infractions. Steve Miller digs up the suspect’s rap sheet.

Despite a driving record that included numerous points for moving violations and a move by the state to suspend his license, Ariel Castro drove a school bus for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District for over 20 years, before being fired in November 2012.

Records show Castro had numerous encounters with local police while driving, from illegal parking in July 1995 to failing to obey a traffic device in January 2001.

Ariel Castro was hired by the Cleveland school district in February 1991, according to records released by the district Tuesday. He was fired November 6, 2012, after leaving his bus unattended at a local school and walking home.

Ariel owned a motorcycle and cars, including a Jeep Cherokee and a red Toyota pickup. He had at one time filled in on bass in a local band, Grupo Fuego. He didn’t drink nearly as prolifically as his two siblings did.

He had girlfriends, and as far as others knew, took care of a beautiful little girl named Jocelyn. Later, of course, it would be found that the girl was birthed in captivity by Amanda Berry, one of the three women Castro is accused of kidnapping.

“He brought her over to see his mother and to play,” says Dolores Essenburg, who owns a home on Kinkel Street, where Pedro and Onil lived with their mother, Lillian Rodriguez, for years. “I saw her a number of times over there, and she was beautiful.”

No one ever saw Onil and Pedro with female companions, though several people believed that Onil was married at one time. A search of marriage records in Cuyahoga County finds none.

Instead, it was Rodriguez, friends and neighbors say, who held the most sway in the family. A Jehovah’s Witness, she was widowed by her husband Nona Castro in 2004. She owns the house on Kinkel as well as another property a few blocks away. On Kinkel Street, Rodriguez and her two most wayward sons were sometimes joined by the two sons of Onil, although neighbors are unclear as to exactly who lived in the three-bedroom house and when.

Onil kept the place up. But it’s still unclear how the two brothers made a living. Abdul Karim said that just last week Pedro Castro came by her home looking for work he could do that would earn him a quick $20. “He wanted to clean my yard,” she said.

“They were always drinking,” said Essenbur of Pedro and Onil. “Anything. Liquor, beer. They drank a lot.” But, she recalled, “they are polite beyond belief. They would help anyone, they are always around and willing to work.”

CLEVELAND — Police Chief Michael McGrath said Wednesday that three young women held in captivity for almost a decade in a middle-class neighborhood were bound during their ordeal, apparently by chains and ropes found inside the frame house on Seymour Avenue.

He also told NBC’s Today that the victims had been “bound and there were chains and ropes in the hall.” He said the women were “very rarely” allowed outside, usually for brief walks in the backyard.

But he denied reports by some neighbors suggesting that local authorities may have missed not only warnings about the alleged captor, but also several chances to rescue the victims.

Some neighbors claimed police were called several times over the years to the house on Seymour Avenue because of unusual behavior, such as a naked women being led on a leash in the yard. McGrath insisted to NBC that a thorough check of police records showed that officers were summoned only twice, and for incidents unrelated to the abduction of the three women.

Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away from Castro, said her daughter saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in Castro’s backyard several years ago. Cintron said she called police, “but they didn’t take it seriously,” Cintron said.

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said that in November 2011, his sister, Annita, heard pounding on an upper-floor window at Castro’s house. When Annita Lugo looked up, she saw a woman and a baby at a window half-blocked by a wooden plank. Lugo called police. He said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered.

Castro also was questioned about 14-year-old Ashley Summers, who disappeared near his house in 2007. But Tomba said there was no new information linking that case to Castro.

While prosecutors announced charges against Castro, federal agents searched a vacant house near where the women had been held. Officials would not say why they were there.

A 2005 domestic-violence filing in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court accused Castro of twice breaking the nose of his children’s mother, knocking out a tooth, dislocating each shoulder and threatening to kill her and her daughters three or four times in a year.

The filing for a protective order by Grimilda Figueroa also said that Castro frequently abducted her daughters and kept them from her. Figueroa died a year ago. [but that order was never given].

Most everyone in the neighborhood knew Ariel Castro.

Neighbors say he played bass guitar in salsa and merengue bands and gave neighborhood children rides on his motorcycle.

Tito DeJesus, an uncle of Gina DeJesus, played in bands with Castro over the last 20 years. He recalled visiting Castro’s house but never noticing anything out of the ordinary.

Juan Perez, who lives two doors down from the house, said Castro was always happy and respectful. “He gained trust with the kids and with the parents. You can only do that if you’re nice,” Perez said.

Castro also worked until recently as a school bus driver.

He was friends with the father of Gina DeJesus, one of the missing women, and helped search for her after she disappeared, said Khalid Samad, a friend of the family.

“When we went out to look for Gina, he helped pass out fliers,” said Samad, a community activist who was at the hospital with DeJesus and her family on Monday night. “You know, he was friends with the family.”

Antony Quiros said he was at the vigil about a year ago and saw Castro comforting Gina DeJesus’ mother.

In 1993, Castro was arrested two days after Christmas on a domestic-violence charge and spent three days in jail before he was released on bond. The case was presented to a grand jury, but no indictment was returned, according to court documents, which don’t detail the allegations. It’s unclear who brought the charge against Castro, who was living at the home from which the women escaped Monday.

Four years ago, in another poverty-stricken part of town, police were heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 women’s bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

The families of Sowell’s victims accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and poor. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door.

Following public outrage over the killings, a panel formed by the mayor recommended an overhaul of the city’s handling of missing-person and sex crime investigations.

One childhood friend said a music session with Castro, who was born in Puerto Rico, suddenly turned bizarre.

“Ariel was in my garage probably five or six years ago. We were recording a song, an idea we had – a little hard rock with some Latin,” said Joe Popow, 45, a father of six who said he has known the Castro brothers since childhood.

“And – you’re going to laugh – he said he was in the CIA. And I don’t know if he was joking or not, but it’s the way he said it, how serious he said it. I didn’t know what he was capable of. That just put me on defense, and I just started stepping away,” Popow said.

When family and friends of missing Cleveland woman Gina DeJesus held a vigil last month to mark nine years since her disappearance, one of those attending was Castro, a longtime neighbor said.

“He came to a vigil and acted as if nothing was wrong,” said Anthony Quiros, 24, who lived next door to Castro’s house growing up.

For years, Castro’s neighbors on Seymour Avenue saw him as a friendly but private person, an accomplished musician who played bass in Latin bands such as Borin Plena and Grupo Fuego. He liked motor-bikes and showed up at neighborhood barbecues in a vacant lot on Seymour Avenue. He was a self-taught mechanic who loved to talk about cars.

In the past, the state has gottenabout $1.2 million of about $40 million allocated nationwide for anti-sexual violence education each year in the United States.

This year, that amount was reduced by about 20 percent, according to the Ohio Department of Health, which doles out the money in the form of grants. Unlike states surrounding Ohio, there is no dedicated state, county or municipal money for the prevention programs.

The rape crisis center gets around $60,000 in federal funds passed through the state to put on sexual violence prevention programs in Cuyahoga County, officials said. But even that money is being whittled away because of budget cuts.

They center used to get about $100,000 from the Ohio Children’s Trust fund, locally managed by the Cuyahoga County Family and Children First Council, but the money was redirected a few years ago.

The rest of crisis center’s prevention money comes from small family foundation grants and individual donations of $25 or $50.

Also curtailed will be the Men of Strength Clubs, which aim to help teen boys learn healthy ideas about masculinity and relationships and understand realities about consensual sex. The center will not start any new clubs next year without new funding.

The Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy Center was also forced to cut back its the teen dating violenceprevention programs it had built up in the past five years because it can’t afford to pay for the staff, CEO Linda Johanek said.

When sexual assault survivors at the college started to come forward and the administration’s response was less-than-supportive, Pallotta said she stepped up to put together panels that will discuss sexual assault on college campuses.

She and others also want to eliminate outdated pamphlets distributed at the colleges health center, which put the onus on stopping sexual assaults on women — by advising them how not to dress or act.

Students like Pallotta may help to reshape the college’s protocol when it comes to sexual assault and to spread awareness about how to support sexual assault victims.

Another Youth 360 participant 16-year-old Kevante Wheatley said he recently corrected some friends who had the wrong information about Ohio’s age of consent for sex, which is 16.

Wheatley, who attends Walsh Jesuit High School has learned how to intervene in a situation like the one that happened in Steubenville with out putting himself in danger. “As we say, don’t be a bystander, be an upstander.”

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Northeast Ohio Missing Persons Database published by the Cleveland Police Department included 96 names as of midday Tuesday. Three of them had been reported missing more than 10 years ago, but fresh reports come in frequently. Some of these are resolved quickly, though police don’t always get a follow-up report.

Seventy-six of the people on the list have been missing for more than a month.

The missing people range in age from 6 to 85 and were last reported seen in areas scattered across Cleveland. Nearly half of them, 46, were minors at the time they were reported missing.

Fifty-one are male and 45 are female.

The map below displays the approximate address where they were last reported seen. Click the map for more details.

In 1993 and 2005, Castro was accused of domestic violence from his one-time wife. The former charges were reduced to mere disorderly conduct, while the latter incident offered grisly imagery of a fractured marriage still capable of wreaking havoc. Castro broke his ex-wife’s nose and ribs, dislocated her shoulders, knocked out one of her teeth and battered her so hard that a blood clot formed on her brain, according to filings in court. In an interview with investigators after the fact, Castro denied ever being abusive toward her.

That filing effectively killed Castro’s chances at even partial custody of his children. Nevertheless, as sources familiar with the man report, his penchant for manipulation pulled Emily and Arlene back into his gravitational pull at times.

Several years after the gross sexual imposition conviction of Colon blew over, Emily Castro gave birth to a girl. It’s unclear who the father was – though speculation points to either a former boyfriend who now lives in Cleveland or, according to the private investigator, something much more untoward, evil, and incestuous.

Emily was living in Fort Wayne, Ind., where she attempted to murder her 11-month-old daughter by slashing her throat four times in 2007. She was later convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

“It is certainly a mystery as to how this happened or why this happened,” Allen Superior Court Judge John Surbeck told The Journal Gazette at the time.

It is indeed a mystery that may yet hold more clues as to who Ariel Castro has been all these years. Any answers that lay within may illuminate a gap in local law enforcement’s own investigations.

***

The Regional Fusion Center and the Cleveland Police Department currently maintain a list of 96 missing persons in the area. Some of them have been missing since the mid-2000s. One was last seen in 1995.

Each person carries with them a story, a life.

Women like Ashley Summers and Christina Adkins have garnered attention in the region, thanks to widespread reporting and an insistent base of family and friends that maintains the vigil.

Summers was last seen at her West 96th Street home, near Madison Avenue, in July 2007. The FBI has not come close to solving the mystery of Summers’ whereabouts, though various reports indicate the possibility that she has been held against her will and that foul play has not been an immediate suspicion in her case. The FBI had tied the investigation into Summers’ disappearance into those of Berry and DeJesus as recently as 2009, though the department never explained why.

http://www.wkyc.com/…/Cleveland-Men-camp-out-for-awareness-of-violence-…‎
Apr 5, 2013 – CLEVELAND — Last month, a near-east Cleveland neighborhood saw three violent crimes against women, including two murders. On March …

CLEVELAND — Last month, a near-east Cleveland neighborhood saw three violent crimes against women, including two murders.

On March 20, Raven Freeman was attacked on East 116th Street while waiting for a bus. Police are questioning two men in her case.

On March 24, Jazmine Trotter was found murdered on East 93rd Street. Officers have charged a man in her killing.

Days later, Christine Malone was found dead in a field on Bessemer Avenue. Police are still searching for her killer.

As the detective work presses on, people who live in this neighborhood are rallying.

A group gathered to call attention to the violence, passing out fliers and knocking on doors, providing women in the area knowledge on how to protect themselves against future predators.

Friday evening, a group of men camped out all night on the corner, to show support. They also made themselves available for anyone who wanted to stop by and offer information on the crimes.

From a blog post I found this – (and no wonder police don’t find it popular to pursue crimes against women – it is a joke to the NRA and those nifty catalogs of online goodies police can buy – like this) –

When I first saw the photo of a freed Amanda Berry with her sister and daughter, and tried to imagine the women’s unimaginable captivity, I couldn’t get another set of images out of my mind–that of “The Ex,” a target mannequin that squirts blood when you shoot her. “The Ex” (variously called “The Ex-Girlfriend” and “Alexa”) is a large-breasted white woman, her clothes party ripped off, blood dripping from her mouth down her cleavage, and she was sold with other “bleeding zombie targets” at the NRA convention in Houston last weekend. A target mannequin that looks like Obama painted green (one happy customer calls him “Barry” in a video that has been removed) also made the news. Buzzfeed reported that the NRA asked the vendor, Zombie Industries, to remove it from display, but it continued to be sold, a reminder of the racism that fuels the pro-gun paranoia. But the NRA didn’t object to displaying “The Ex,” and she still appears on the company’s website, where one commenter writes, “This Zombie Bitch is awesome, reminds me of a girl I knew in High School.”

Here is “The Ex”:

And here she is after getting shot up:

Up until yesterday Amazon was also selling the $89.99 product. (“Great for a bachelor party!” read the only five-star review. “This was a very original, cool way to kick off a bachelor party for a firearm enthusiast, such as myself.”)

Noting that “‘The Ex’ shooting target turns violence against women into a joke and promotes the idea that men should want to kill their ex-wives or ex-girlfriends,” the activist group Ultra Violet petitioned Amazon to stop selling it. In less than 24 hours, 63,000 people signed and “The Ex” was gone.

A similar, if real-life, ex target was Grimilda Figueroa, the former wife of kidnap suspect Ariel Castro. Castro was accused of beating Figueroa, breaking her nose twice, knocking out a tooth, dislocating her shoulders and threatening to kill her and their children, according to a filing in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court. The filing also said that Castro “frequently abducts [his] daughters and keeps them from mother/petitioner/legal custodian.”

Figueroa’s brother, Jose Figueroa, told RadarOnline that in 1996, Grimilda and her children with Castro fled from him to a battered women’s shelter. “If she stayed with Ariel, he would have killed her,” Jose said. “She had gone to the hospital and called the police many times but they never did anything.” (Grimilda remarried and moved out long before Castro allegedly kidnapped the three women; she died of cancer last year.)

If Jose Figueroa’s account is accurate, his sister may have saved her life and her children’s, as so many abused women do, by finding refuge in a women’s shelter. But, as learned this week, men who abuse women will be able to corner them even more easily: the sequester is cutting some $20 million of funding for women’s shelters and protection programs over the next year.

Like all sequester cuts that don’t involve airplane delays, the cuts to shelters are not making the national news, but they are locally. From KSL.com in Utah:

Julee Smith, the director of Your Community Connection in Ogden, said she works with people every day who are running from violent situations. She said many abuse victims need a place to stay, and due to the lack of funding, she has had to start turning them away,

“We literally had a lady call, she had four children and begged to get in our shelter,” Smith said. “She said, ‘I have 45 minutes to get out.’ And we said ‘We’re sorry, we don’t have any room.’ And then the police call and say that she has been abused again.”

Tim Murphy of Mother Jones cites other shelters and domestic violence programs that are being reduced or completely eliminated in Louisiana, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Oregon, and other states. “The projections are bleak,” he writes.

Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) office estimates that 70,120 fewer domestic violence victims will have access to recovery programs and shelters; 35,900 fewer people will get help obtaining non-shelter services such as restraining orders and sexual assault treatment. Cuts to programs related to the Victims Against Crime Act will hurt another 310,574 people.

This increased danger to women has been made possible by the same pols, mostly Republicans, who are too scared of the NRA to pass an expansion background checks, checks that would block sales of guns to anyone convicted of domestic violence, among other crimes.

And you know that big-shock Pentagon report released Tuesday that estimates 26,000 sexual assaults took place in the armed forces in 2012, a 37 percent increase over 2010? The report that also said that fewer than 10 percent of the sex-assault cases end with a conviction at court-martial, while 62 percent of victims who dare to report an assault are rewarded with retaliation?

Local Statistics – Cleveland Ohio included – latest statistics come from 2009, not later –

Please note: These statistics were collected by law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Please be cautioned against drawing conclusions by making direct comparisons between cities. Comparisons lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading observation affecting communities and their residents.

Ohio:

1 out of 7 women, or nearly 635,000 women in Ohio, has been a survivor of forcible rape sometime in her lifetime.1

Rape is the most underreported crime.

Ohio is in a region of the nation that has a higher-than-average rape prevalence.1

30% of rape victims experienced major depression at some time in their lives, (about 90,000 victims in Ohio) and 10% of women never victimized by violent crime.1

Women between the ages of 20-44 had the highest levels of risk for having ever been raped (over 15 percent), whereas women ages 65 and older had the lowest levels of risk (less than 5 percent).1

Out of Ohio’s population of 11,485,910, there were a total of 4,419 reported forcible rape cases in 2008.6 (This includes only females over 12 years old.)

Cuyahoga County:

Of the 565,000 women living in Cuyahoga County, over 80,000 have been raped.1

In 2007, there were 516 reported rapes, accounting for 39 percent of all reported crimes in Cuyahoga County.2

Approximately 600 sexual assault cases were seen at reporting hospitals in Cuyahoga County.3

An estimated 11 percent of the population of Cuyahoga County (or 149,274 people) have been raped some time in their lives and are in need of healing services. 4

Additionally, 1,600 sexual assault referrals were received by the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services in 2008. 8